


Running from Lions

by ayoungvein



Category: All Time Low, Cobra Starship, Panic! at the Disco, The Academy Is...
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayoungvein/pseuds/ayoungvein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five boys. One trip. And the secrets they're running from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running from Lions

**Author's Note:**

> The road trip au.

Gabe watches the London lights as his car swims through the sea of neon, bathing him in the several shades of artificial moonlight as the city around him sleeps. There’s the soft droning of a.m. radio to keep him company through the night as the digital clock blares 3:34. It is three in the morning in London, and Gabe’s driving through the city at forty miles an hour without looking back in the rearview mirror.

Drumming his fingers against the steering wheel, he checks the fuel gauge to see the meter drop lower and lower towards an impending empty.

And up ahead, there’s a gas station still open. The fluorescent lights are a synthetic heaven for him when he steps out into the crisp foreign air to fill his car up. He needs a full tank; he’s not coming back. From now on, Gabe’s chasing the horizon ahead. Carefully avoiding the skeletons dancing in the rearview mirror. His past trying to catch up with him.

“Where are you heading?” an American voice asks him. It’s a boy who’s shuffled over to Gabe’s tank, one hand in his pocket, hair a mess, flannel stained and unbuttoned and a bag of chips in his other hand. He’s chewing one thoughtfully.

“Wherever the road takes me.” Gabe leans against his car, watching the kid watch him.

The boy’s hair is sticking up in ten different directions with ten different hues in it. There’s crumbs on his lips from the chips and his hands are stained an orange cheesy color that he sucks away with an obscene _pop_ noise. “Should head south,” the boy says, “I’ve always wanted to go to France.”

Amused, Gabe quirks a brow. “Who invited you on this road trip, kid?”

“My name’s Alex,” he says, “I can help pay gas money.”

“Who invited you on this road trip, kid?” he repeats.

Alex makes an aggravated sigh in the back of his throat. He leans against Gabe’s car, too. “You’re running from something, aren’t you?”

Slowly, Gabe nods.

“Good. So am I. Let’s run together,” he proposes, “I hear the roads get lonely in Europe.”

“I heard all roads lead to Rome,” Gabe counters.

Without another word, the two fold themselves into Gabe’s car and set off down the empty London streets. The dying lights of the city chase after them as they chase the horizon.

On the radio, the digital clock blares 3:46.

And all Gabe can think is _not a second too soon._

 

\---

 

Upon being shaken awake, Alex blinks with bleary eyes over at the owner of the car, who had introduced himself as Gabe, and looks at him questioningly. There’s the cool feeling of condensation against his forehead that must be from the fact that he’d been sleeping with his cheek pressed against the glass of the car. The ghost of his breath evaporating any proof that he was there, anyways.

He’s glad this escape wasn’t a dream. He’s glad he’s locked in a car with a complete stranger, coasting down the highway to a foreign land. To an escape. To Paris.

“What?” Alex asks, noticing the neon orange light of the sun beginning to creep over the horizon they’ve been chasing on their southward expedition to France. The glare is fierce and too bright for Alex, and he yawns.

“You were having a nightmare,” Gabe tells him simply. He doesn’t ask him if he’s okay or if he wants to talk about it. Hell, he barely acknowledges Alex’s existence. Then again, they’re strangers to each other. Not even on a last name basis.

“Oh.” He shrugs, hoping that Gabe doesn’t notice the slight wave of uneasiness that has settled in the passenger seat. “It happens.”

His nightmare replays in his mind like some foggy movie intent on haunting him. A ringing church bell… a rainy London afternoon… a congregation in suits….

“Don’t let it happen again. You’re driving us after the next rest stop.”

Alex nods. “You know, it’s funny. Before I graduated from high school, I dreamt of going out and seeing the world,” he chuckles, “I never thought it’d happen like this.”

“What?” Gabe smirks. “You mean you didn’t fantasize about shacking up with some stranger to go to the most romantic city in the world?” He shakes his head, still clearly amused. “Kid, didn’t your mother teach you not to talk to strangers?”

“And didn’t yours teach you not to pick up desperate kids at gas stations?” Alex counters, smiling as Gabe laughs. He likes Gabe’s laugh. It makes him think less and less of the nightmare crawling up his spine. The nightmare he’s been running from since he came to London.

In a different life, Alex remembers a laugh he used to know. A laugh he fell in love with that sounded like champagne glasses, autumn breezes and acoustic arpeggios. Not church bells and hummed hymns and the squelch of feet against wet grass.

He opens up his phone to see he’s missed a few calls, but he doesn’t listen to any of the voicemails.

Gabe notices the slight movement out of the corner of his eye. “Miss your folks, already?”

“It’s not them I’m running from,” he says, turning his stare out the window and watching the English buildings flit by him like the life he’s leaving behind.

“Then why not call them?”

“Because it’s better this way,” Alex tries to convince himself, staring hard enough out the window that he can see his reflection in it. A scared boy with his arms full of secrets and a dirty New Found Glory t-shit.

And all Alex can think is _that damned shirt._

 

\---

 

  
They stretch their legs before they decide to drive through the tunnel from England, to France. It’s not much, just five minutes to get some fresh air that they can’t get inside the car because Gabe has been chain-smoking through the entire ride, flicking the ashes out the window and watching the smoke dissipate behind them like the pasts they’re running from. The secrets they’re hiding. The skeletons they’re locking in the closets.

Alex pulls a bunch of maps out he’d picked up at a gas station and lays them across the hood of the car, pointing to exits and freeways that would get them to Paris the quickest. “It should only take five hours.”

“Fine, but after Paris, I want to go to Germany.”

Biting his lip, Alex tries to catch Gabe’s eye. “When will this road trip end, then?”

He shrugs. “Whenever we’re done chasing the sun.”

Alex’s eyes gleam in the light of the afternoon. “So… Germany?”

Gabe nods. “I’ve always wondered what the big deal with German beer was.” He eyes Alex carefully. “Are you even old enough to drink?”

“In Europe I am,” he proclaims with a cocky smile and pats Gabe on the shoulder before gathering up the piles of maps.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

And Gabe lets out a sigh of relief because he thought this kid was younger or something. “You sure you want to run away to France with a complete stranger?”

“It doesn’t matter the destination,” Alex says, “I just want to run away.”

“Fine.” They both slam the doors shut as they get back in the car, and Alex is driving this time. All the way until Paris. All the way until the stars are singing their names to the dawning sun.

He feels dirty in this shirt, but he doesn’t say anything. Just bites his lip and tries to pretend he and Gabe have been doing this for a while. “So…” Alex tries to break the silence, “why did you bring me?”

“Are you complaining?”

“No. Just curious. You barely know me. For all you know, I could be some deranged psychopath running from a mental hospital.”

Gabe rolls his eyes. “And for all you know, I could be some axe murderer going to deposit your body in the Alps.”

“But, seriously, why’d you bring me?”

 

The car falls silent as Gabe lights another cigarette. Alex turns the radio up and listens to New Found Glory- the only cd Gabe’s car has, besides Justin Timberlake- as it mocks him through the speakers.

He feels even dirtier in this shirt.

 

 

\---

 

Once the night takes over, the two of them bunk down at some cheap, French motel. Gabe’s wallet is full of some big wads of cash and Alex’s pocket is full of change and hundreds of crinkled one dollar bills. Atypical for a teenager. And Alex doesn’t know Gabe’s age, but he guesses that maybe the older man had liquidated his funds before running off. After all, Gabe looks like a very business-type man; Alex saw a suit in his suitcase. Actually, Gabe could even pass for an assassin. It’s very James Bond, and Alex lays awake at night thinking how cool that would sound to all his friends back home. To all his family up in London. To the champagne glass laugh in London.

He opens his phone to find a few more missed calls and a few more voicemails that he doesn’t listen to. He tries not to cry as he reads one of the text messages from Jack: _Alex, don’t do this. Your brother would have wanted you to live your life._

And laying in a cool, French motel with a long-limbed stranger who takes up half the bed may not be an ideal life, but Alex thinks he’s living it, anyways.

 

 

\---

  
“You had another nightmare last night,” Gabe tells the kid when they’ve left the motel behind and are en route to Paris with the horizon in their eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

Gabe hears the yawn and exhaustion in Alex’s voice, so he doesn’t push the subject. Doesn’t push the fact that the kid’s little screams and whimpers and whines had kept him up into the little hours of the morning. No, he doesn’t push it because he has a heart.

And maybe people, friends, colleagues, even family, will disagree to that now; but Gabe has a heart. That’s why he’s on this road trip in the first place. That’s why he’s running away from everything with no strings attached. Just a tiny ring weighing down his conscience in a glove box.

“When we get to Paris, I think I’m going to get one of those hats,” Gabe says, aimlessly, “One of those stupid berets.”

“You couldn’t pass for French, you’re too Spanish,” Alex tells him.

“Actually, I’m Uruguayan.”

“Ah. You are gayan,” Alex laughs.

Gabe laughs, too, and shakes his head because if he’s had a penny for every time he’s made that joke to someone else. “Actually, I think I just want a croissant. Or some French fries.”

“French fries aren’t actually French.”

“Damn right they’re not. They’re freedom.”

Alex rolls his eyes, but Gabe can see a smile tugging on his features. “I just want to see the Eiffel Tower.”

Silently, Gabe agrees with Alex that they’ll go to the Eiffel Tower. Because he has a heart, despite what the wedding ring inside the glove box would say.

 

 

\---

 

  
Contrary to the situation at hand, Gabe’s never actually been in love. He’s never actually seen fireworks behind closed eyelids during a kiss or heard orchestras and symphonies while the bed sheets were rumpled. He’s never felt his heartbeat increase or his hands shake or feel light-headed at the mere thought of someone. He’s never been in love; he’s always been numb, and he thinks that might be some of the reason he’s come this far.

The closest he might have been to falling in love was the first date he’d ever had to some street fair. Their was ice-cream and lots of walking and laughing. But Gabe thinks it might have been the fact that it had been his first date, more than the person who he was this. Hell, what he’s doing with Alex in Paris, right now, feels like that same first date.

They’re both laughing as they make their way over to the Eiffel Tower, an ice cream in each of their hands and the lights of the city in their eyes as the sun starts to set in the west.

“We could have eaten these at the park, had you not been kicked out by the cops,” Alex scoffs in accusation, but he’s smiling and laughing at the memory just like Gabe is.

“I had no idea they were wild advocates of pigeons’ rights to shit everywhere.”

“That bird didn’t even shit on you. It missed. Unfortunately.”

“Well, I chased them off before they could do more damage.”

“Yes, and the cops chased you off before you could do more damage,” Alex laughs and Gabe echoes him, even as he smashes the ice cream cone onto the boy’s nose.

They’re on a last name basis, now. Gabe Saporta and Alex Gaskarth. Both of them running from some past in London. And both of them not caring where the daylight will bring them. What the starlight will bring them. Or where the moonlight will lead them.

Though, at the moment, the impending celestial lights are bringing Gabe and Alex to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Where they’re alone to look out at the brightly lit city with the taste of ice cream in their mouths and the freedoms from their past. Alone except for a boy.

…alone except for a boy who had managed himself to the ledge of the Eiffel Tower, staring down at the bottom.

And before Gabe can stop himself or thinking it through, he approaches closer to where the boy is and says, as calmly as he can, “What are you doing?”

The boy jumps, and Gabe almost makes a grab for him, but he’s already gripping the fence behind him. His hand is shaking, and so is the rest of his gangly body. Illuminated by the lights of Paris, Gabe can see the tears on the boy’s face.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he goes on, “That’s almost a one thousand foot drop, there. You jump, and your insides will be painting the sidewalk in less than five minutes.”

“But you’re not me,” he cries, “I _have_ to do this.”

“I’d hate to know what kind of bet you lost, then.”

The boy shakes his head, taking another look down at the city below them, and Gabe can see the fear in his eyes. It’s the same fear he sees in his reflection, and it’s the same fear he sees whenever he looks at Alex. It’s the fear of something you’re running from.

Alex watches on, having dropped his ice cream cone, mouth hanging agape at the sight.

“G-g-go away,” he sniffs.

Gabe ignores him. “What’s your name?”

“W-William.” The boy’s knuckles are nearly stark white against the nighttime around them as he grips the fence behind him. The small Parisian breeze is blowing his dark hair in every direction, and Gabe doesn’t think he’s seen anyone more of a hot mess than this boy named William ready to jump off the edge of the Eiffel Tower.

“You don’t want to do this,” Gabe goes on, afraid to move out and grab William but afraid to give him too much space. “I know you don’t.”

“How?”

“Well, you would have jumped already.”

The only noises on the tower is the wind and the sounds of William’s soft cries. Gabe is holding in a breath, and he has a suspicion that Alex is too.

Finally, carefully, trembling, William turns around and climbs back over to the other side of the tower. Gabe helps him along and doesn’t even push the younger boy away when he falls into him, burying his wet face into Gabe’s chest and sobbing against him.

“Do you have anywhere to go?” Gabe asks.

Buried in his chest, William shakes his head.

Gabe sighs and looks over at Alex for confirmation. The younger nods. “Looks like you’re one of us, now.”

 

 

\---

The boy’s name is William Beckett, and once he’s settled down and isn’t crying and not hanging off the side of the Eiffel Tower, Alex thinks he’s quite fun to be around. And he’s pretty. So it really doesn’t hurt.

“Why do you have a suit?” the boy laughs, waltzing around the Paris hotel and holding Gabe’s suit up as the older man had offered him some new clothes that weren’t stained with metallic grime from the Eiffel Tower.

His laughter is forced, and his smiles aren’t real. But he’s trying, so Alex gives him credit.

“That’s none of your business, is it?”

William shrugs. “I think it’s cute.”

“I’m going to sell it before we leave here.” Gabe collapses down on the bed. They have one double bed and have snuck William in here. The question of how they’re all going to fit on one double bed, especially when Alex knows that Gabe’s a blanket hog and has like eight extra arms when he’s sleeping, is something they’ve yet to tackle. “Could use the extra gas money if we want to make it to Germany.”

“We’re going to Germany?” William grins.

Alex nods before eyeing William with scrutiny. “What are you doing in Paris? You sound American.”

“So do you.”

“But… well, you’re not on vacation or you wouldn’t have come with us.”

“Ever think I came here _just_ to jump off the tower?”

They all fall silent, and William excuses himself for some fresh air out on the terrace.

Meanwhile, Alex looks to Gabe for help. “Gabe, he scares me.”

As expected, Gabe laughs, “He’s less harmful than I am!”

“What if he tries to kill himself again?” Alex runs a hand through his hair, feeling how sweaty it is from his anxiety.

“I won’t let him.”

“Gabe,” Alex sighs and takes a seat at the bottom of the bed, “I’m sick of dealing with death.”

“…who’s funeral was it?” Gabe’s voice is thick with emotion, yet devoid of any feelings. A juxtaposition in his own right.

“My brother’s.”

Gabe nods and gets up from the bed, ruffling Alex’s hair as he passes him. “I’ll go talk to him.”

 

 

\---

 

Leaning against the railing, William stares out at the city, almost glad that he’s here to bask in the essence that is Paris. The city of love. Except… he’s not spending it in love with someone. He’s spending it with two strangers who watched him try to kill himself. Who think he’s a basket-case. But William’s not a basket case. He’s perfectly sane; he knows he is.  
The door behind him slides open, and William sees Gabe lean against the railing beside him, a cigarette between his fingers as the smoke curdles up to the sky.

“You okay, William?”

“I’m not trying to jump from the hotel,” William says, dully. Emotionally unattached.

“I know,” he replies, hastily. “But you’re not okay. You’re still upset.”

“What did you expect?”

“Why did you try to kill yourself?”

“Because sometimes you can’t think of any other ways to escape. And sometimes you can’t give yourself a reason to live.”

Gabe shakes his head, and William can see him blowing a smoke ring out towards the city. Towards the horizon. “I think suicide is for cowards.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m fucking scared.” The very thought of him being so close to death scares William more than anything he’s done before. And the very thought that he had been so close and hadn’t followed through scares him more. He’s got no more plans for the future. He’d cancelled all his plans and bought a plane ticket to Paris. Run away and jump off the Eiffel Tower had been his future. No notes, no goodbyes. No evidence he had even existed back home. And now, he’s got nothing. He’s fucking scared, and he tells Gabe this.

“You have us,” Gabe says through a mouthful of smoke. “And we may not know each other, but we’re on this road trip together. Europe is going to kiss us thanks before our time is up.”

William’s afraid to ask, but he does, “And when is our time up?”

“Whenever we want it to be.”

“Why are you in Europe?” William asks.

Gabe stubs out his cigarette and turns on his heel, heading back inside. “Goodnight, William.”

The only thing William can manage before Gabe closes the door behind him is, “…call me Bill.”

And then, silence.

 

 

\---

 

They leave France before the sun fully comes up, and the only thing Gabe requests before they hit Berlin is that they stop at the Rhine. Alex doesn’t protest, and William is asleep in the back. Emotionally exhausted. The ghosts of tears still on his face. His eyes still red and puffy from crying himself to sleep at night. Alex doesn’t judge because he cried his first night, too. And his second. And his third.

“When we were in London, you asked me why I brought you,” Gabe murmurs. His eyes are absorbed in the road ahead, and he doesn’t look in the rearview once. “And I ignored your question.”  
Alex shrugs. “You do that a lot. I’m used to it.”

“I brought you because I’m lonely.”

Alex frowns, knitting his eyebrows together. “Gabe, a-are you serious? But… _how_? I’ve put two-and-two together. I know you’re a runaway groom. How is that lonely?”

Shaking his head, Gabe doesn’t tear his eyes from the road. “You don’t understand, Alex.”

“Then explain it to me!”

But, like most of Gabe’s explanations, they are unsaid.

The rest of the drive to the Rhine is quiet. Alex doesn’t even say anything after Gabe throws his ring into the river, watching the current take it away from him. In the back, William wakes up and offers to drive when he sees how upset Gabe is.

Gabe doesn’t object.

 

 

\---

 

In Berlin, Gabe gets drunk and leaves Alex and William to take care of him and take him back to the place they’re staying at. They manage to get him into bed where he passes out, leaving Alex and William alone to themselves. The first time Alex has been alone with William this entire trip. Alone to scrounge up some conversation he’s incapable of. When he’s talking to Gabe, Alex doesn’t have to worry about conversation because Gabe supplies most of it: making jokes, laughing at his own jokes or changing the subject in clever little ways. Alex can’t handle the etiquette of conversation making… especially not with a ghost that’s back to haunt him.

“Is he okay?” William jerks his head over to Gabe, concern swimming in his eyes. He’s always sneaking glances over at Gabe, Alex has noticed. Even in the incandescent glow of the hotel, there’s a light in William’s eyes that haven’t gone out since Paris. France forever embodied in his eyes, but forever ended today.

“He left his bride at the alter,” Alex says, almost bitterly, “so, no, he’s not okay.”

“Are _you_ okay?”

Alex shakes his head. “Why would you want to kill yourself?

William’s eyes widen, and he looks taken aback. Alex doesn’t care, though, because he wants to know. Not to be rude or bitter. He wants to know what could propel someone to take their own life. How someone would prefer death to living. How someone could just give up and forget about everything and get rid of themselves.

Do they think it’s noble? Do they think it’s the best way out? Do they think it’s an easy access into heaven?

Finally, William shrugs. “I don’t know. F-for a lot of reasons, I guess.”

“What are your reasons?”

“I was… I was scared,” he mumbles, taking a strange interest in his Converse. Alex can still see his eyes flitting over to Gabe’s passed out form, but neither of them acknowledge it.

“Did you leave a note to anyone?”

“No.” William fumbles with his hands as he plays with them and unconsciously shakes. He doesn’t have a jacket, and Gabe cranks the air-conditioner up, so it’s no wonder that William is cold.  
Alex is still wearing the New Found Glory t-shirt. He’s washed it at every hotel they’ve been at. “Did you leave anything?”

“I left my sister my acoustic guitar. She always liked hearing me play and wanted to learn herself, but… I was too selfish to teach her. S-so the night I left, I gave it to her. Told her I was buying myself a new one on the trip I was going. She didn’t think anything of it….” William looks up and eyes Alex, carefully. “Was that shirt your acoustic guitar?”

Looking down at the New Found Glory shirt with a trembling lip and watering eyes, Alex nods. Yes, his brother gave this to him the night before he killed himself. Yes, he’s a terrible brother because he didn’t think it was weird that his brother pawned his favorite shirt off to him. Yes, he’s selfish because that’s all he could think about the night his brother was killing himself.

He falls asleep, ignoring another text message from Jack: I miss you. Come back.

Yes, he’s a terrible person.

 

 

\---

 

They spend an extra night in Germany for Gabe to recover from his hangover and for them to decide where to go next. When it’s decided that they should go to Vienna, Alex bunks off to bed. He’s been silent and hasn’t spoken at all. For a while, Gabe suspected that he had maybe done something to Alex unintentionally. William, however, filled him in on the story; and Gabe had coaxed William out of the hotel to give Alex some time to himself.

  
Gabe took William to some crummy art museum the younger boy had been gushing at over a stack of pamphlets. And, although art really isn’t his thing, he’d enjoyed perusing the gallery with William: the younger babbling off every random fact he knew about every little detail in the museum. They stopped at a fast food place for a quick bite before heading back to the hotel.

Not wanting to disturb Alex, the two of them compromise; and Gabe finds himself laying on the hood of his car beside William. Staring up at the stars that look more foreign in Germany than they did in England or France.

“Thank you, Gabe,” William breaks the tranquility of the night. The little patch of the celestial heaven he’s been staring at is at home in his eyes. Forever embedded in them like the lights of Paris, but forever ends eventually.

“Don’t mention it. I had fun with you, Bill. I’m actually disappointed I didn’t meet you earlier in my life.”

“If that were the case, things might have gotten a little creepy,” Bill says with a teasing smile, “I’d have been jailbait or something.” Gabe merely rolls his eyes, and Bill continues, “B-but I didn’t just mean for the museum. I meant… for saving my life. In Paris.”

“O-oh. _Oh._ It was no problem, Bill. I’m glad I did it.”

“Me too.” Bill sits up and smiles down at Gabe, hovering over him. His brown hair is dangling in his face, and Gabe has to resist the urge to brush some of the strands from his face in order to look into his eyes. “Gabe, what are you running away from?”

“I’m pretty sure Alex told you.”

“But I don’t understand. Why would you run away from your own wedding?”

The only thing Gabe can hear in the warm summer air is William’s familiar breathing and the sound of his own increased heart rate. Feeling William so close, Gabe can’t think straight. He doesn’t understand it, but he doesn’t think he wants to. “I… I didn’t love my fiancé.”

“… _what_?”

“Listen, Bill, you don’t understand. I lay awake, the night before my wedding, trying to imagine the rest of my life with her, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t fucking do it.”

“So you ran?”

“It was better than going up there and lying through my teeth that we would be together till death do us part!” Gabe snaps because he can feel William’s judging eyes on him. Everyone will judge Gabe for this mistake. For this decision in his life. For this change of his mind. And he couldn’t take it back… even if he wanted to.

“Then why did you get engaged to her anyways?”

“Because, Bill, I was scared. I was scared I was never going to find someone to fall in love with or spend the rest of my life. I-I’ve never felt the butterflies in your stomach or the sparks in kisses thing.” He chuckles, bitterly, “I’m twenty-six years old , and I’ve never been in love.”

Without another word, William lays back down next to Gabe on the hood of the car. Staring up at the German stars and the matching horizon and the several velvet hues of the night-time sky. Gabe smiles whenever he feels William’s side pressed against his, the body warmth much welcomed in the cold northern weather.

“I’m glad you didn’t die before I met you,” Gabe whispers into the still night.

“I’m glad I didn’t, either,” he whispers back before grabbing Gabe’s hand and lacing their fingers together.

Above them, Gabe watches the stars stretch on for infinity.

 

 

\---

 

“I’m cold,” Alex complains, “I’m from Baltimore. I’m not used to this kind of weather.”

Gabe chuckles from beside him as the three of them walk down the Viennese streets with the blustery Austrian wind blowing their hair in seven directions and nearly blowing the underweight William away from them. He grips the sleeve of Alex’s flannel that Gabe has swapped the kid for, seeing that they only have two jackets between the three of them. “I’m from Jersey,” he tells them, “I’ll be fine.”

“I’m from Chicago,” William chimes in, wrapped up in one of Gabe’s hoodies and some gay scarf he had adorned on the Eiffel Tower, “I don’t mind the cold. Really.”

“Yeah, but you’re also ninety pounds of bones, querido.”

Alex glances over at the two of them and notices the way William looks down and blushes at the word, and the way Gabe steals the light from William’s eyes. He hides a knowing smirk because he’s noticed the way Gabe has smiled more and how William’s laugh sounds more real and less robotic and how the both of them can’t keep their eyes off each other. It’s like a lovesick fairytale come to life. He’s not quite sure what querido means, but he’ll take it as a good sign.

“Gabe,” he interrupts, “you keep paying for the hotels. How do you afford it?”

Angling his body more towards Alex, Gabe catches the younger’s eyes- even if they’re subtly noticing the way his two friends are holding hands. “I’m president of a car firm.”

William drops Gabe’s hand in shock.

“And they don’t care that you’ve dropped off the face of the earth?”

Gabe shrugs. “I took a few weeks of saved up vacation time for a honeymoon, but… well… change of plans, it looks like.” When Alex continues looking at him with a raised brow and doubtful smile, he adds, “I left my vice president, Ryland, in charge. He’ll handle it all; I trust him.”

Alex nods, and they continue walking the Austrian pavements to nowhere. Overhead the sun is beginning to set as talk of Italy sets in. Their shadows are large and looming ahead of them, silhouettes of their futures. The impossible, infinite futures in their minds. Beside him, the shadows of Gabe and William have intertwined.

“Alex, have you ever been in love?” William asks, glancing over with those lights of forever in his eyes.

Alex bites his tongue and shrugs. Inside his pocket is his cell phone where he’s ignoring a text from Jack: _Alex, I love you. Please, stop this._ “Have you?”

“I fell in love with The Smiths once,” William laughs, giddily, high on the freedom of Europe. High on European air and Viennese sunsets. “ _Because if it’s not love, then it’s the bomb…_.”

The phone in his pocket vibrates; and Gabe joins in on the singing, grabbing both of William’s hands in his and swinging the boy around. Jumping on the lamppost like a scene from the movie,

Gabe serenades the boy, “ _…the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together!_ ” belting out the last of the lines and garnering the attention of a few locals.

He laughs at their theatrics and waits for them to wane before commenting, “New Found Glory broke my heart.”

Silence ensues, and they stare at his chest where the know the offending t-shirt is beneath the layer of jacket.

To alleviate the situation, Gabe snickers, “And Justin Timberlake turned me on.”

William laughs, and Alex laughs; and they’re laughing down the corner, disappearing into a coffee shop and leaving their shadows at the door. Without the attachments dancing in the rearview mirror, they’re free. Free to follow the roads of Europe into infinity.

Forever, he thinks, as he sneaks a text under the table where the other two are holding hands. _I’m homesick for you._

Forever ended today.

 

 

\---

 

  
Once upon a time, William remembers, his family cared about him and loved him and didn’t let him run off to Paris with suicide in his eyes and not a single penny to his name. It took one spring night to change that, one rainy night, when the world fell from William’s shoulders and shattered before his eyes. The anxiety came, the breakdown followed and he gave himself a cut on each wrist just to remind himself what it felt like to be human.

Once upon a time, William was sane. Now he isn’t, and his family had been hell-bent on exploiting his insanity. On cutting out the imperfection from their perfect, suburban lives. William gave himself another cut, took another pill and escaped the hospital he’d been sent to with a plane ticket to Paris and a goodbye to his sister.

It wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like a lifetime.

The clocks feel different in another country. William’s not sure if they’re speeding up or slowing down; and he’s not sure if he wants to know.

“If you jumped, I think I would have, too,” Gabe murmurs into his ear, the scent of strong coffee and even stronger cigarettes ghosting across his cheek. Regardless, William smiles and tries to focus on the road ahead of them. The road to Venice.

“Pull over,” Alex says. In the back, William can see the boy is still gripping his phone. He’s constantly holding his phone, flipping it open and claiming to check the time. It’s a lie, though, because William saw him last night texting someone. He hadn’t said anything because it’s not his place. His place is, here, in this driver seat with Gabe’s voice in his ears and the entire world at their feet.

They left the maps behind at some gas station, and they hadn’t looked back once.

William pulls over, about to ask why, when he sees why. There’s a young boy with his thumb in the air, and a dorky grin on his face as he shuffles into their awaiting car.

“Thank you,” the boy chatters once he’s comfortably seated next to Alex in the back. “I’ve been thrown out of so many trucks, I lost count…. And a group of sheep kicked me out of the last one. They literally just kicked me off onto the street. Pretty bizarre.” He runs his mouth like a boat motor, and none of them seem capable of keeping up. “Where are you three going?”

“Venice.”

“Cool. I’d like to go somewhere warm. I’ve been traveling from Amsterdam for days, and I’m freezing. I think I might have pneumonia or something.” To compensate, he pulls a small wad of crumpled bills from his pocket and drops it onto Alex’s lap. “Gas money.”

“You’re running away, aren’t you?” Alex asks, knowingly.

The boy nods. “I’m Brendon.”

Introductions are made, and the road trip resumes. Alex doesn’t sing along with the New Found Glory cd that’s still on repeat, but Gabe joins William on ‘Kiss Me’, and he swears he’s never felt more sane than he has driving down the road with three strangers and no plans for the futures.

Chicago is so far behind him, now. So is the Eiffel Tower. And Berlin. And Vienna. And the past he thought he once knew.

“ _Kiss me. Out of the bearded barley, nightly. Beside the green, green grass. Swing, swing. Swing the spinning step. I’ll wear those shoes, and you will wear that grass._ ”

Even Brendon joins in, “ _Kiss me. Beneath the milky twilight. Lead me out on the moonlit floor. Lift your open hand. Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance. Silver moon’s sparkling. So kiss me….”_

There’s the click-clacking of phone keys in the back.

“ _Kiss me. Down by the broken treehouse. Swing me up on its hanging tower. Bring, bring. Bring your flowered hat. We’ll take the trail marked on your father’s map._ ”

They laugh as the road roars below them, and the music roars in their ears. And it’s the kind of day that could last forever.

“ _Kiss me beneath the milky twilight…._ ” Alex sings under his breath, loud enough for the other three to hear.

William smiles because New Found Glory didn’t break his heart.

 

 

\---

 

  
“Venice is the city of romance,” Brendon says, his voice too loud on the empty space of the gondola, “The city of bridges. The queen of the Adriatic. You could get lost on the streets and bridges.”

“Then let’s get lost,” suggests Alex, lounging lazily and staring at his reflection in the canal water. He doesn’t look like a ghost or a skeleton; he just looks broken, and that’s good enough for him. It means he’s getting better. A road trip is the all cure to heartbreak.

On the other side of the gondola, William is tucked into Gabe’s side and the two of them are giggling over some inside joke or another. Lately, they’ve been attached at the hip; and Alex has never seen Gabe smile as wide or seen the lights so bright in William’s eyes. The beauty of Venice is the mirror of them.

“How are we ever going to get to Rome if we get lost, mi amigo?” Gabe looks over, and Alex notices a lot more of his Spanish slipping out. Usually it’s nicknames for others, but sometimes Gabe will let slip whole phrases and sentences. The three of them have no clue what any of it means, but they all smile and laugh when he says it. Lost in translation or not, Gabe’s mother tongue means something to him. Means something to the people he speaks it to.

“Follow the roads,” Alex chuckles remembering that London night when he met fate (or, at least, fate named Gabe Saporta).

“There’s about one hundred and seventy boat canals in Venice,” Brendon supplies. He’s a human brochure.

Meanwhile, Gabe has swung his arm over William’s shoulders and is humming ‘That’s Amore’, something that kindles the fire in the younger boy’s eyes and even makes Alex grin like a teenage girl watching romance unfold. European stories about to be told. A Venetian sort of love affair.

“Why were you in Amsterdam?” Alex asks Brendon.

The young boy shifts under the scrutinizing glance, all awkward smiles and dubious gazes before mumbling a very convincing lie, “I was getting high.”

It’s okay to lie, though, Alex decides. They’ve all done it, and they’re all still doing it. Brendon isn’t comfortable to explain his reason for running away. None of them really are. But he’ll change his mind. He’ll find three strangers to be more of a family to him than his actual blood ever was.

There’s no other way to play the game.

The only way they’re playing it is drifting lazily down the Venetian canals, watching as the afternoon sun falls lower and lower, barely kissing the horizon. With a violin quartet echoing somewhere in the distance of the marketplace, Gabe’s hums and William’s accompanying words.

“ _In Napoli, where love is king. When boy meets girl here’s what they say. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore…_.”

“Estoy enamorado,” Gabe whispers into the crisp, Italian evening.

The songs and the humming have put Brendon to sleep, snoring against Alex’s shoulder and even William looks ready to take off- a cue that they should go back to their hotel for the night. But Gabe pays the gondola driver for another round and kisses William’s hair.

“Gabe, stop talking in Spanish. We’re in Italy.”

He looks up, a coy grin on his face. “But love is love, isn’t it? The place doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not in love,” Alex points out because Gabe has admitted to never being able to love. To being numb to the feeling. Numb to affection.

“Neither is Bill,” he tells him. “Are you in love, Alex?”

“ _…when the stars make you drool like a pasta fazool, that’s amore…_.”

 

 

\---

 

  
When Gabe and Alex, as Brendon has learned all their names en route to Rome, are in a convenience store at a gas stop, Brendon steps outside the car to stretch his legs and chat with William- who’s keeping a steady eye on the tank, though Brendon couldn’t be too sure because his eyes are obscured by a large pair of sunglasses that Gabe had bought him in Venice during a nightly sojourn out. He copies the other boy’s motions and leans against the car, watching the numbers on the gas tank rise. “Getting high in Amsterdam isn’t the real reason why I’m in Europe.”

William, still staring at the tank, he nods. “I know.”

“Then why haven’t you three said anything?” Brendon demands. This entire road trip makes no sense to him. Three strangers in one car not sharing anything about their past. Following the horizon and star gazing every night on the hood of the car. Shacking up in hotels and singing along to songs that were hits on the radio years ago.

“It’s not about where you’ve been.” William slides the sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and eyes Brendon, steadily. And Brendon understands, in that moment, why William is wearing the cheap sunglasses. He’s got a light in his eyes that could blind the stars in the sky. “It’s about where you’re going. Us, we’re going to Rome.”

“What about keeping secrets?”

“Everyone has skeletons in the rearview. They’re not going to change if people know about them.”

He shakes his head, almost scoffing at the naivety of these three, wondering where the fell from the face of the earth. Wondering what dropped them in Europe.

When the car is filled up, William pulls the hose from the car and settles back against the car more fully, looking up at the overcast sky with a frown set on his lips. Gray clouds are rolling in and an impending sound of thunder follows. Rainy days that threaten to follow Brendon wherever he goes.

He sighs, “I brought the rain.”

The other boy shrugs. “Sometimes you have to learn to dance in it.”

“I’m from Nevada. We don’t dance in the rain.”

William tssks, “When in Rome….”

Then, Gabe is shouting across the parking lot and Alex is jogging over to them, chucking a bag of chips at William and telling him to eat up. He even throws a bag in Brendon’s direction, but the newcomer still feels like an outsider.

They’re kicking up dirt to a city of marble, and that should be extraordinary enough for Brendon. He still can’t help but feel empty, though, but he knows he’s not the only one. Gabe and Alex have empty skies in their eyes, whereas William’s are filled with stars of a millennia’s past. Maybe there’s no rhyme of reason as to why he shines the brightest of the four of them, but there’s probably a reason why they’ve lost their shine.

Stars burn up, Brendon knows. They explode.

But he used to thing they’d blaze forever.

 

 

\---

 

Brendon wanders around Rome, feeling the Italian sun warm his skin and the culture warm his heart. He loves Italy; he loves Europe, and he doesn’t think he wants to leave. This feels more like home than his parents’ home in Nevada ever did. There is freedom and familiarity in this country, and there is a sense of warmth. A sense of home. A sense of infinity that Brendon’s been chasing since high school days. And if this was the only way to reach his goal, he’s glad he’s done it. Glad he’s broken so many rules and lied to so many people to get here. He doesn’t regret it.  
He doesn’t regret the subterfuge of his new personality. Or the winning prize at the end of the tunnel: freedom in Italy.

Gripping one of those stupid brochures of city tours tight in his hand, Brendon makes his way to the ruins of the Coloseum. The ruins of a city of marble that had reduced to the dust their car had kicked up on its journey here. It’s gigantic, threatening and impending as he stands beneath it, small and insignificant in the great scheme of Roman ruins. In the great scheme of the world, itself, Brendon is insignificant. Nothing.

“It’s not made of marble,” a voice pipes up beside him, as though he can read Brendon’s mind. Or maybe Brendon had been talking to himself, he’d been so lonely on the road for so many weeks that sometimes he forgets that he’s not alone in the world… even if that’s what it feels like sometimes. “It’s made of limestone.”

“It was covered with white marble,” Brendon counters, wittily, glad that his obsession with brochures and pamphlets make him some sort of a genius.

After all, without even traveling the city, Brendon could recite the map of Amsterdam. He could explain the main street, Damrak, and how it leads into the street, Rokin. He could pinpoint its red light district and the quays and the Jewish quarter. In Hamburg, he learned the entire history of its port and how much cargo it exports yearly, etc. He could even name all the cathedrals in Prague and their founding saints. And the only reason he knows all this is because he’s been running. He’s been running for a long, long time. So what is this kid’s excuse to be on Brendon’s territory?

“Kind of wicked how we’re standing in a place where hundreds of gladiators died, huh?” the kid mentions. Brendon looks over to see he’s tall and lanky, just like William. Only… he’s not quite so feminine. He’s more awkward looking and hippie looking with a pair of green pants and a scarf and vest and bandana. More of a hippie than a refugee, like the strangers he met are. He smiles, strained and hopeful at the same time. “I’m Ryan, by the way.”

“Brendon.”

“I know Rome like the back of my hand,” he says.

“I know Venice like the back of my hand,” Brendon states, remembering the streets of the city and the canals and the brochures tucked away in the glove box of Gabe’s car.

“Want to come back to my place?” he asks, shifting awkwardly on his heels and biting his lips and Brendon finds that _oh so adorable_ , the back of his mind thinking that maybe he’s found his William to his Gabe. Because, those two might not know it yet, but Brendon knows they’re in love. He sees it in the way the light of William’s eyes reflect into Gabe’s. The way the younger fills his empty skies with all the stars and constellations of another world. It’s in their eyes, and Brendon can see the clouds of a summer’s day in Ryan’s. He takes that as a sign and nods.

Ryan leads the way back to his place.

And it turns out that Ryan’s place is nothing more than some abandoned house, where he claims he’s been squatting for the last couple of months. There’s a broken window that Ryan’s tied a couple of sheets over; and in all actuality, Ryan’s house in nothing but tied sheets and colorful scarves to patch up holes or for makeshift hammocks or simply for decoration. Loose change is scattered everywhere and guitar picks and energy drink cans. Amidst it all, though, is Ryan lounging back on one of his hammocks and an acoustic guitar in his hands.

He smiles, an actual real smile with a color to his face that is not from the Italian summer sun. “I’m a musician.”

Brendon chuckles, “Is that why you’re dirt poor?”

Nodding, he plucks a few strings. “I ran away to Europe for some inspiration. My visa is almost up… but, well, I’ve written a few good songs.”

“Really?” Brendon asks, wondering why Ryan hasn’t gone beyond playing on streets of some foreign country if he’s really got strings of silver and a voice of gold.

“Do you want to hear ‘Behind the Sea’ or ‘Mad as Rabbits?’” he asks, his smile growing when Brendon joins him on the hammock.

Brendon ignores him for a second, staring around at the shanty place. “Why do you live, here?”

Ryan frowns. “Why have you been running away?”

And Brendon doesn’t know how Ryan knows, maybe Brendon really was talking to himself earlier or maybe Ryan is better at reading people than the runaway thought. Maybe there’s some way to tell anyone. Some sort of madness that Brendon is exhibiting that shows he hasn’t been in some stable home for sometimes. A glint in his eye, a tick to his face, a gesture of his hands…?

When it’s apparent that Brendon isn’t going to fall victim to these riddles, Ryan points to a large faux curtain that the sheet is pretending to be, stained with three different colors of wine and what could be a drawn-on sharpie calendar. He shakes his head and pulls back the curtain, only for his jaw to hit the floor and his eyes to dilate- high on the sight of Rome at his feet.

The sun had long since gone down, and now Brendon is staring down at the lit-up Roman buildings, ripped straight from some sort of painting he’d seen in a museum in a different lifetime. The bobbing lights from the plaza, the myriad of people bustling around in all assortments of clothing, and in the horizon are the ruins of dozens of marble buildings. In the horizon that Gabe says they’re chasing, Brendon watches the Italian sky kiss the Roman ruins. And he thinks how the sky must’ve cried when Rome died.

“It’s beautiful,” he murmurs, catching the crescent moon watching him from above, the only light that filters into Ryan’s place (that, and the light from the plaza and adjoining buildings).

“That’s what I fell in love with,” he declares. “That’s why I haven’t left Rome.”

“You really should.” Brendon turns on his heel, coy smile in play. “Your face looks like a lobster. This sun is no good for you.”

He shrugs and turns his attention back to his acoustic, fingers itching to play Brendon a song. Instead, the runaway joins him and offers him his own smile, letting a hand close over Ryan’s on the neck of the guitar. “Have you ever thought about Spain?”

 

 

\---

  
They’re laying on the hood of Gabe’s car again, an empty cup of gelato and one of those cheesy binoculars for an opera Gabe had treated William to beside them. Nothing is between them, though, only their intertwined hands as routine would have it. Ever since that night in Berlin, William grabs for Gabe’s hand and Gabe grabs for William’s hand on a daily basis. Gabe originally thought it was for the lack of contact William had had since he escaped from Chicago; originally Gabe had thought William was homesick. But then Gabe had started grabbing for William’s hand, and it had nothing to do with homesickness. It had to do with Gabe missing William’s skin and his touch and that little light in his eyes that never goes out.

“I could fall asleep out here, with you,” William tells him, grinning and letting go of Gabe’s hand to roll on his side and face the older man.  
He rolls his eyes. “We have a hotel.”

“One double bed for the four of us,” William reminds him, raising on his hands to trace the fabric of Gabe’s shirt. Every place William’s fingers explore burns a little and sends shivers down Gabe’s spine like a Parisian night so long ago when he’d seen this boy hanging off the Eiffel Tower. This boy who is nothing like that boy from France, but everything like him at the same time.

“You like the stars, then?” he asks, noticing how his voice is hitched and hoping William doesn’t.

Bill shrugs. “My mother told me I had eyes like the stars. A-and my sister liked camping out in the backyard, so I learned a little about constellations to appease them both. Nothing astronomical or anything….”

“Your eyes _are_ like the stars,” Gabe says and blushes when William grins.

“Don’t you miss your fiancée?” the boy murmurs lowly, focusing on his long fingers tracing along Gabe’s chest, resting over where his heart is.

He pauses, watching William’s focused expression and the way he’s worrying his lip and the way he’s refusing to meet Gabe’s eyes. Finally, he replies, “No. I mean, I think I miss everyone I’ve ever met in my life to some extent. But I don’t miss being with her. I was never in love, so there was never any heart to miss.”

“Remember when I said I fell in love with The Smiths?”

Gabe nods, wondering if William’s hand can feel the erratic thumps of his heart.

He’s leaning completely over Gabe now, their chests nearly touching and William’s hair tickling Gabe’s jaw. “Well, I lied. I’m in love with more than music. I think-”

But Gabe doesn’t wait for William to complete that sentence because he’s craned his neck and crashed their lips together. Something he’s been waiting to do since Berlin. Since Vienna. Since Venice. Since every highway they’ve been driving on.

But it’s completely worth the wait because, even though William’s words have been drowned out into Gabe’s mouth, the boy kisses him back for all he’s worth. Bill’s hand is fisting the shirt right above Gabe’s heart, and Gabe’s hand is on the back of the boy’s neck, feeling the strands of hair there and relishing in how soft they feel.

William, he is Europe. He smells like the Venetian canals and the German air that Gabe had been high on. He feels like the Viennese wind, and the sounds coming from the back of his throat sound better than any Italian opera Gabe could ever pay for. And when Gabe dares to squint his eyes open to see what perfection looks like, he sees the Parisian lights of William’s eyes in the air around them.

Gabe sees the stars in William’s kiss and vows to himself he’d give the boy heaven with every touch.

 

 

\---

 

Sitting in the hotel lobby, Alex sulks behind a Roman newspaper, periodically checking his phone as though a wave of nostalgia has overtaken him and he’s wishing for a phone call begging him to come home. _Come back to London. I miss you_. Or _I need you._

No such call comes. And neither does a text. Alex hasn’t gotten a reply since he replied, himself. He’s freaking out so much about this that he has distanced himself from Gabe and William (Brendon had taken off the second they stopped the car, muttering wildly about the Roman ruins). Alex had spent the day alone, cynical thoughts about all the poets who had dared to Italy a country for lovers.

Baltimore is for lovers.

Chicago is for lovers.

London is for lovers.

Italy is not. Neither is Rome. Or Venice. Or Vienna, Berlin, Paris…. Not for him, at least.

“Alex!”

And now he’s hearing things. Ghosts from his past coming back to haunt him. Echoes from phone conversations a lifetime ago. Rome mocking him with the voice of a lover he left in London.

“Alex, fuck….” A hand tugs the newspaper from him in one swift movement, and then there’s a body on top of him in that chair. A string of kisses up his cheek, and Alex feels his eyes water as he wraps his arms around the body.

“J-jack? Jack, what are you doing here?” He doesn’t care about all the bystanders of anyone who could be watching them. Hugging Jack back with all that he has, Alex only cares about the contours of the other boy’s body and the grooves and the weight of it that he thought he’d forgotten forever.

“I’m here for you,” he murmurs, pulling back so that they can look each other in the eye.

Jack’s eyes aren’t a mirror to Alex’s anymore. Where Alex’s eyes are filled with homesickness and the pain of losing a loved one and European city lights, Jack’s are filled with something entirely different. Heartbreak. The tear rolling down his face proves that.

“Jack, I’m sorry.” Alex wipes it away with his thumb and ushers Jack to his feet.

He shakes his head and wipes his eyes. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Instead of guiding him to the room, Alex throws his arms around Jack and buries his face in the taller boy’s chest, shaking his head over-and-over. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Y-you can’t just do that, Alex. You can’t just run because… because your brother killed himself. Alex, you can’t do that to me. You could have died. I could have never seen you again. F-fuck, why didn’t you come talk to me?”

“I don’t know,” he says weakly. “Haven’t you ever wanted to run away from your problems?”

“You can’t run away from this, Alex,” Jack says, voice wavering and choking but continuing on, “Your brother is dead.”

And Alex buries his face into Jack’s neck and cries. In Rome. For all the past emperors to see.

 

 

\---

 

  
 _Italy is for lovers_ , Alex thinks absentmindedly, once he and Jack are lying naked on the hotel bed with the window open and the Italian breeze tickling their skin. They’re intertwined, just like they should have been the entire time, and Alex is kissing the salty taste of sweat off of Jack’s cheek as he makes his way over to his lips. “I missed you,” he breathes out, loving the way his breath tastes like Jack’s as their words mingle together.

Tonight he remembered what if felt like to be loved by someone who knows all his flaws and imperfections.

“Alex, come back to London. Come back to Baltimore,” Jack pleads into that kiss, brushing the sweat-licked hair out of Alex’s eyes.

“You have to meet Gabe and William, though. Th-they’re meant to be together,” Alex tells him, “They’re in love and--”

“ _We’re_ meant to be together. I’m in love with you.”

Alex shakes his head. “And Brendon. We haven’t figured out his story, yet, but we will. William didn’t tell us his until Germany. And Gabe, he lets a little more slip with each country we’re in.”

“Alex, no.” Jack’s eyes are determined and his lips are pursed and he looks so fucking scared that Alex places a kiss on his jaw. “We have to go back to London. We have to go back to Baltimore. We have to go _home_.”

“I don’t have a home,” Alex whispers, “It’s not home if he’s not there. Home isn’t a _place_ , Jack. H-home is where the heart is, and he broke mine.”

“Then let me fix you.” Jack kisses Alex’s hair, holding onto him desperately as though he’s going to disappear again. “I’ll fix you anywhere. But, please, let’s go back to your family.”

“We were going to Spain,” Alex says sadly, “Barcelona. They were becoming my home, Jack. They made it easier to miss him.”

“Alex, I have two plane tickets back to London,” Jack says, “for tonight. Alex, please don’t make me go back alone. I need you.”

There are tears in Alex’s eyes because this is something he hadn’t expected. Throughout all the cities and the laughter and the freedom, Alex had never expected a reality check. He had never even let his mind wander to what he would do when the road trip was over. When they had stopped chasing the horizon. And even though Gabe had said it would last forever, Alex knew it was a lie. They couldn’t stay in Europe forever. They weren’t residents, and they would be kicked out. Everyone has to go home.

Reality crashes down around everyone.

“Alex, let’s go back to London,” Jack says with one last kiss.

Through his bleary eyes, Alex nods, feeling the last sweep of Italian wind against his skin and thinking, through all his heartbreak and unsaid goodbyes, _London is for lovers._

 

 

\---

 

Gripping Ryan’s hand tight, Brendon races up the hotel stairs, desperately searching for their room number. His heart is beating fast, and he can feel Ryan’s confused eyes staring holes in his back; but none of that matters. Brendon is going to introduce Ryan to Gabe, William and Alex. They’re going to find some way for Ryan to fit in the car with them on their way to Spain, and they’re all going to run away from their pasts. From their problems. From the things that scare them most.

“Brendon, where are we going?” Ryan pants. Despite having long legs, he’s having a hard time keeping up with Brendon- who’s always been the epitome of kinetic energy.

“ _Here_!” Brendon announces, sweeping his card key and opening the door to find Gabe and William laying on the bed, with the muted television’s lights illuminating the darkened room and falling on their still forms.

Brendon thinks they’re sleeping for a moment before Gabe speaks, his voice thick with an emotion Brendon’s never heard. “He’s gone.”

“W-what?”

“Alex is gone. He went home.” Gabe points to a note sitting on the end table, but Brendon doesn’t want to look at it. Just feels the lump in his throat and the ticking of a clock in the back of his mind, slowly counting down the seconds until it’s Brendon’s turn to go home. In his mind, running away means leaving home forever. Alex had proved him wrong. Alex had proved that this road trip is nothing more than a break from reality.

You can’t run away from your problems.

“He might come back?” Brendon offers, forgetting all about Ryan who is still holding his hand.

“Brendon,” William says, voice unusually soft in the small hotel room, “Alex is gone, and he’s not coming back.”

 

 

\---

 

The next day, Ryan sits in Alex’s place. Everyone is silent.

 

 

\---

  
Clenching the wheel tightly and training his eyes on the road ahead, Gabe tries to ignore his own disappointment with the blaring sounds of New Found Glory, but he eventually gets fed up with hearing Alex’s voice everywhere in the back of his mind, so he throws the cd out the window of a car going seventy miles an hour on a Swiss highway.

They’re on their way to Bern, now, one last stop before they make it to Barcelona. Somehow, with having lost Alex, Gabe is sensing the impending end of this road trip. The reality check. The fact that he can’t legally stay in Europe forever. He has to go home eventually and save his reputation around New York, take his place back at the company, forget this refugees he’s shacked up with. They’re the fairytale chapter in the book of his life, and everyone has to grow up eventually.

“Gabe,” William mutters, “stop acting like you’re mad at him.”

“I am.”

“No. You’re upset,” he corrects Gabe; and out of the corner of his eye, Gabe spots a sympathetic smile on William’s features.

He huffs, glancing in the rearview to find Brendon and Ryan asleep against each other, having stayed up late into the night driving and copiloting and rambling off facts about Italy and Switzerland to each other and the rest of Europe at their feet. “Does it make any difference?”

“Gabe, I won’t leave you,” William whispers, turning his attention back to his shoes and stealing the spotlight from Gabe’s line of vision. The light in Europe that never goes out. The light that’s been guiding Gabe everywhere since Paris, and Alex has stolen a piece of it.

“Alex wanted to run away forever, too. Forever ends, Bill. Reality exists out there. Europe can’t hide that forever.”

“But I’ve got nothing waiting for me… in the real world. I’ve got no family or job or home.”

“William, we’re in Switzerland. Let’s not talk about our past,” Gabe says, and it’s the best advice he’s given himself in a long time.

With a small smile and a nod, William asks, quietly, “Do you want to talk about Alex?”

Gabe, he nods. Of course he wants to talk about Alex. As much as he hates the reminders of the boy, he’s afraid to not talk about him. What if he forgets about him? What if he forgets Alex Gaskarth and their time through Europe together? What if he becomes another story, in the end? Just like the rest of them will become when reality hits and they all grow up. They’ll all become stories.

“He once said me and him were like Bill and Ted,” Gabe chuckles, trying to mask his pain with laughter. After all, isn’t laughter the best medicine? “Us, and our bogus journey.”

William makes a hum of acknowledgment but doesn’t interrupt.

“And another time, he told me this trip felt like running from lions,” Gabe says, remembering the night on their way to Paris. “He can run for as long as he likes, but they’ll catch him eventually. It’s just a matter of where and when.”

There is a toll up ahead for them to get off this road. Almost to Bern. Almost to a city where Alex’s ghost won’t walk the streets.

“I don’t think they caught him,” William says in that same soft voice he’s been using since Alex’s departure. “They stopped chasing him a while ago, Gabe, he just went home.”

Gabe fumbles with the radio dial as Ryan snores in the backseat.

Nothing can drown out the static he can hear of Alex’s voice in his ear.

“ _Never stop running, Gabe. The lions will eat you alive._ ”

 

 

\---

 

While Gabe sulks in the Swiss hotel, Brendon leads Ryan and William around the main attractions of the capital city. He brings them to the _Zytglogge_ , pointing at the medieval clock in awe and wonder and laughing at how close to history they are in the old city. Ryan shows his enthusiasm, and even William takes some pictures of them throughout the makeshift tour with a crappy disposable camera he bought at some rest stop.

“Did you know the city was named after a bear?” Brendon asks, rambling on, because sometimes he forgets himself in all the history books he’d absorbed as a kid and all the brochures in the glove box. Caught up in books of kings and wars, losses and victories. Caught up in a past that was never his to experience.

“I don’t know anything about Bern, actually,” Ryan says in some sad sort of way. “I’ve only ever known Rome. Rome was my home.”

“Bern is home to a little over a hundred thousand people.” Brendon’s eyes only shine in the false lights.

He remembers, in a life that wasn’t enough to chart in the history books, of an unloving home. A falling apart family. And how he had to watch it all happen before his eyes. He remembers, in a life with Vegas skies and desert suns, a heartbroken boy who never really had a family at all. A boy who just had a room of books and a radio to get him through all the fights and screams and shouts.

And that stupid little boy with a broken heart, well, he grew up to be a misfit. A traitor. A refugee. An outcast in a sea of already broken people. That boy, well, he grew up to become Brendon Boyd Urie.

The boy in Bern who lived in history books.

“Brendon, is the only past you know about not yours?” William asks, cautiously, lowering the camera and slyly looking over at Ryan, who is trying not to step on the cracks and break his mother’s back on the sidewalk.

He stares down at the cracks and shoves his hands in his pocket, saying in a barely audible voice. “You told me it’s not about where I’ve been. It’s about where I’m going.”

“You can’t run away from your problems.”

Frowning, Brendon looks up at William with a set face. Ryan is hopping over cracks in the reflection of the boy’s eyes. “Then what are you doing in Europe?”

Turning on his heel, Bill heads back to the hotel. “I’m running from lions.”

 

 

\---

 

At the top of the Swiss Alps, Ryan stares down at the city, shivering in his thin layers of clothes as snow cascades upon the mountaintop. A shaky exhale of breath, a fog of smoke and a chatter of teeth later, Brendon is also up the mountain, having hiked up it with Ryan when Bill had returned to the hotel to a sulking Gabe Saporta. Now, it’s just the two of them, on the mountaintop with the summer snow of Switzerland falling down around them and the frigid, northern breezes carrying their voices down to the city in a wave of echoes.

“I know it’s not Spain,” Brendon huffs, face flushed from the hike and voice hitched, “but we’re on our way.”

“Thank you,” Ryan whispers, regardless, eyes trained on the horizon ahead.

He hadn’t understood what Gabe and William had been raving about on the car ride to Bern. Something about following the sun. Chasing the horizon. Following it into forever. Now, staring at the horizon from the alps and feeling the snowflakes kiss his hair and the cold bite his cheeks and Brendon’s warm body pressed against his side, Ryan thinks he understands it a little bit more.  
He understands it enough not to be homesick, anymore.

“For what?”

“For helping me out of Rome. I would have stayed there my entire life, playing songs on the beach for people who won’t look twice my way.”

“I still haven’t heard you play for me.” Brendon inches closer, but Ryan doesn’t think anything of it. It’s cold up here, that’s all.

Ryan shrugs, eyes still trained on the horizon and not the rosy color of Brendon’s cheeks. “You never told me which song you wanted to hear.”

He feels a hand grab his. A cold, numb, frozen hand lace their fingers together and a warm breath ghosting across his cheek. Brendon’s head has taken home upon his shoulder, and he’s nuzzling into the warmth of Ryan’s coat, smiling into the fabric. “I want to hear them all, Ryan.”

“I want to see Barcelona.”

Brendon doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything and his breath is barely-there against a sliver of skin Ryan’s scarf exposes. The grin is still there, a Cheshire grin that Ryan’s been accustomed to whenever Brendon is going through periods of manic happiness- mainly when he’s galumphing across foreign cities and pointing at European wonders of the world, proudly reciting all the facts he’s memorized to make up for the fact that he doesn’t have any childhood memories to share. Their hands are still intertwined, and Brendon’s lips are against his neck, and Ryan’s never felt more inspired in Rome than he is in Bern.

Snowy skies in favor of sun licked beaches. Switzerland over Italy. New beginnings against skeletons in the rearview.

“We have all the time in the world, Ryan,” Brendon mumbles into his skin. Ryan feels a snowflake melt on his cheek as Brendon chuckles against his neck, a gust of warm air. “You know, when I met you, I thought you were Aladdin.”

Ryan grins, despite himself. “Does that make you Jasmine?”

Silence. Contemplation. Brendon shakes his head. “I’ve always wanted to be a sorcerer. Can I be Jafar?”

His eyes haven’t left the horizon where the mountains meet the heavens in Bern. “Brendon, you’re more like Genie.”

He feels the grip on his hand tighten and a wider smile against the skin of his neck. And with Brendon tucked against his side on the Swiss mountaintop, Ryan thinks he finally understands what they mean by chasing the horizon.

 

 

\---

 

In a small town along the southern coast of France, they spend the night in the car. It’s warmer along the coast than it was in Bern, so they don’t need to sleep with the heater running or pile what little coats they have on top of each other or sleep in a giant pile like that children’s book, _Where the Wild Things Are._

It’s actually warm enough that Gabe and William take part in their new favorite past time, of staring up at the European stars from the hood of the car. They’re no longer holding hands, but William’s ear is pressed to Gabe’s heart, listening to the rhythmical beat and murmuring to him, in a sleepy daze, how much it sounds like a song he once fell in love with.

“I meant it, you know….” William mutters, “I _don’t_ have anything to go back to in Chicago.”

Gabe tightens his grip around Bill’s waist, shaking his head almost disapprovingly, but the smile on his lips gives him away. And Bill shifts closer to him, still listening to the erratic speed of Gabe’s heart.

“We’ll be in Barcelona tomorrow, querido,” Gabe tells him, his hand traveling from William’s waist to play with the ends of his hair.

“You should speak Spanish to me more often,” William says, tilting his head a fraction of an inch to place a kiss on Gabe’s jaw. It’s not much, nothing big, nothing small, but it’s contact. And it’s comfort. And that’s all they need on this road trip.

After all, William had been stuck in some sort of loony bin his mother had sent him to before he snuck out and set out to Paris in order to kill himself. The only contact he’d had before Gabe and Alex had been a few split seconds of saying goodbye to his sister, Courtney, giving her the acoustic guitar and kissing her forehead. Vaguely, he wonders if Alex’s brother did the same as he tells Gabe all this.

“Why did you go to Paris, anyways?” Gabe’s voice is low and almost raspy from the cigarettes he’s been smoking since Alex’s departure.

Bill shrugs, lifting his head from Gabe’s heart to catch the eyes of the older man. The empty black canvas of a pupil that William’s eyes filled with stars- or so Gabe once whispered to him (in Spanish until the younger forced him to translate). “I guess for the romanticism of it all. People would think I wasn’t being selfish when they found my body. That I was doing it for love.”

“That’s bullshit,” Gabe snorts, “Love is about never getting hurt.”

William shakes his head. “Love is complicated, Gabe. Y-you fight… and you yell and people get hurt.”

“No. You don’t really get hurt, Bill. You’re in love, so none of it really matters at the end of the day.”

Rolling his eyes, William lays his head back on Gabe’s chest to listen to his heartbeat. And, he thinks, if he could stay like that forever, he would.

Gabe breaks the silence. “Why were you sent away like that, Bill?”

William, he worries his lip for a few seconds before mumbling into the fabric of Gabe’s hoodie. “I had depression. A-and I’d get anxiety attacks over it. My mother didn’t think it was normal.”

“No one’s normal, Bill. Welcome to the club.”

 

 

\---

 

“Ryan, would you play a song for me in Barcelona?” Brendon asks, voice muffled into Ryan’s shoulder as the two of them sit, curled in the backseat of Gabe’s car, as the four strangers spend a night in some small town in the south of France. Outside, the lazy lights from occasional cars flitting by on the road they’ve parked to the side of, dance in the two boys’ pupils.

The scrawny boy’s eyes flicker open, lethargically. He hasn’t slept often since they left Rome, homesick already for a place that was never his home to begin with. A place that was a camp for the refugees and broken-hearted people of the world. Now, in a different country, in some nameless town, with the sounds of tires against the highway and Gabe and William’s soft murmurs on the hood, Ryan struggles to not think of Rome. The Italian chatter at the plaza in odd hours and the way the moonlight filtered in through his makeshift home, the home he’d made out of scraps and abandoned in a second. The way Rome had been some distant, fairytale land, and the way France could never be.

“I’ll write you a song,” Ryan amends, thinking of his acoustic tucked away in the trunk, his fingers already itching for it. “On the beach.”

Brendon’s smile is too big for his face and too happy for a boy who’s running away from home, but Ryan likes it, anyways. “You’d have liked Alex, Ryan. He was sort of a poet, too. Read me some scraps he’d write on the hotel notepads in Venice. …actually, I think they’re in the glove box.”

Shifting around in the backseat, Brendon leans forward to rummage through the glove box before pulling out a wad of paper- all of them bearing different hotel signatures as a header. He then sits back, laying his head back on Ryan’s shoulder and shuffles through them.

“Brendon, what are you running from?” Ryan asks. He’s been studying the boy ever since Rome, and still he hasn’t gotten any closer to discovering Brendon’s past or his secrets. Gabe, he often lets slip about the bride he never loved; and William mentions his suicide attempt at the Eiffel Tower openly- the place where William met Gabe and Gabe met William. Brendon, he keeps himself guarded with stupid facts from stupid brochures.

Again, Brendon avoids the question, holding up a slip of paper. “ _I’ve never told a lie, and that makes me a liar._ ”

“I wrote songs about why I left,” Ryan tries, stunned at how clever the younger keeps trying to avoid the subject. He wonders what he’s hiding from the public eye, wonders what secrets he likes to keep.

“ _I’ve never made a bet, but we gamble with desire._ ”

“My home sucked. My family sucked,” he continues, staring at his hands and his fingers that itch for the guitar, the only way he can tell the story of his life, “And I can admit that because… well… I don’t miss it. Rome was my home, Brendon. More of a home than Vegas ever was.”

Brendon doesn’t look up. “ _I’ve never lit a match with intent to start a fire_.”

“Is Europe more of a home than yours?”

“ _But recently the flames are getting out of control…._ ”

“Brendon, damn it,” Ryan nearly growls. Brendon stops reading Alex’s thoughts, but he doesn’t look up. “You can’t erase your past. You can only learn from it.”

Another car coasts by them. And Gabe murmurs something to William in Spanish. Brendon drops the papers to the floor of the car, and Ryan holds his breath. Time stops from the time Brendon’s eyes catch Ryan’s to the time he lowers them back down to the scattered scraps of Alex Gaskarth’s heart- splayed haphazardly across the floor- the last remnants of a memory.

“Ryan.” Brendon’s voice is thick with emotion. “Shut up.”

 

 

\---

  
It’s noon when they reach Barcelona, with the car playing one of those stupid a.m. radio talk shows that Gabe’s become addicted to (even more so than all the cigarettes he’s been smoking) and the air conditioning cranked as the Spanish summer air hits them. They’d taken the scenic route along the southern coast of France, with Brendon muttering little facts about the ports and the industry and the agriculture under his breath and Ryan being moodily silent.

Gabe’s not sure what had happened between them in the car, but he had seen little scraps of paper with Alex’s handwriting on them scattered about… if that could be any sort of indication to him. Though, he’s not sure what Brendon or Ryan would have to argue about over Alex’s poetry. Sure, Brendon had been fascinated by it in Venice; but Ryan had never known Alex. As far as Gabe’s concerned, those papers should never have left the graveyard Alex had denounced them to, never should have been dug up like the skeletons in the rearview that have been chasing him since London.

But, then again, as far as Gabe is concerned, Barcelona is about him and William. “ _Bienvenido al paraiso, Guillermo_ ,” he says when they’re parked outside their hotel on the beach.

William smiles and steps out of the car, cheap sunglasses over his eyes and hands in his pockets. “I thought I was querido?”

“William, you’re everything.”

The boy smiles and blushes the shades of Spanish sunsets before following Gabe into the hotel- some cheaply classy place that offered last minute bookings and played elevator music in the lobby. “Say it to me in Spanish.”

“Eres mi todo, Guillermo,” Gabe says, swiftly, turning to look back at him as he leans against the check-in desk. He smirks at how pink William’s face is (even though he doesn’t understand a word of the language) and how bright his eyes are and how he’s got his bottom lip between his teeth and, fuck, Gabe’s never believed in perfection before… but this is pretty damn close.

Especially when William takes a quick look around before marching up to Gabe and grabbing a fist full of his shirt before _growling_ into his mouth. “Gabriel Eduardo Saporta.” He licks into Gabe’s mouth, and the older man wonders if William is high off the Barcelona heat. “You better speak nothing but Spanish to me, here.”

Ignoring the looks of other tourists, Gabe smirks against his lips. “Joder, te quiero.”

 

 

\---

 

Barcelona isn’t like Bern or Rome or Venice or Amsterdam or any of the other stops Brendon’s been to in Europe. Barcelona, Spain is something else entirely. There’s miles and miles of beaches and tourists all reading the same brochures and monuments and museums and the strings of Ryan’s acoustic twanging across the roar of the ocean, the salty sea spray in his nostrils and the voice of his gangly angel singing about vacations that needed taking and hearts that needed breaking.

“You should teach me how to make music.” Brendon leans against his counterpart, smelling sunscreen and cheap hotel shampoo.

“You should tell me about your past,” Ryan refutes, the song having ended and the strings ringing with the last of their cadence.

“You shouldn’t pry into business that isn’t yours,” Brendon spits and leans away from Ryan, staring down angrily at his hands and wishing he had taken William’s cheap sunglasses to hide the anger in his eyes.

“Brendon,” Ryan sighs, abandoning his task of starting another song, “I left Rome for you. You could at least tell me _why_.”

But Brendon doesn’t want to think of that. He doesn’t want to think of the parents who had never wanted him, the siblings who had ignored him or the biggest betrayal on his part. The way they disowned him when he slammed the door on his way out. The way Brendon Urie had become an orphan. Instead, he tries to remember how many tourists Barcelona attracts annually. He tries to remember landmarks or historical battles or any famous Barcelonians.

Brendon mumbles something about Barcelona when the Romans had turned it into a military camp.

And Ryan turns a shade of red that the European sun hadn’t cast onto his skin. “You really can’t face your problems, can you? How long are you going to run?”

“You’re running, too,” Brendon returns, fiercely.

“I’m not running from my problems,” the older boy says, lips pursed and hands clenched around the guitar. “Yeah, I ran from Vegas. But I knew enough of myself not to like it, and I ran away to change that. Now, I’ve changed myself; and I like myself so much better.”

“I hate myself,” the younger growls out.

Without another word, Brendon marches away, fists tight and a sharp growl buried in his throat as he thinks about what gives Ryan the fucking right to think he knows Brendon. They’ve been together a few days, and already Ryan thinks he knows him. Already thinks he’s one of those stupid Chuck Palahniuk books to study. To open at leisure and read when he gets bored. Brendon isn’t a convenience to anyone anymore; he wants to be a priority.

But he gets the complete opposite reaction when he manages himself into the single room the four of them are sharing.

He feels like an annoyance when he opens the door and finds Gabe and William tangled in the sheets, William with his sweaty head on Gabe’s naked chest and Gabe watching the smoke from his cigarette curl to the slightly yellowed ceiling of the room. Brendon, he stands in the threshold, watching the two lovers in the Spanish sun, the window open and the sounds of the Mediterranean crashing down around them, and wonders when it’s his time to be that priority to someone else instead of a constant voyeur.

“Brendon, where’s Ryan?” William asks, sounding sleepy and lethargic and _complete_ and all those things the other boy wishes he could be with someone who looks at him the way Gabe looks at William. As though he found his soul mate. As though his black-and-white life had been colored before his very eyes, and he’s still afraid it’s all a dream- all too good to be true.

“I’m not his keeper,” Brendon snaps, trying to be angry and upset the atmosphere of the room, but failing miserably.

“Stop resisting the kid.” Gabe rolls his eyes with a chuckle. “He follows you around like a puppy dog. At least throw him a bone.”

Brendon eyes the lovesick figures, warily. “So… have you told each other _everything_? About your pasts?”

The two of them freeze and catch each other’s eyes where the sunlight streaming in through the open window finds home. Finally, Gabe stubs his cigarette out in the ash tray and pulls William closer to him. “No, Brendon. We haven’t told each other everything.”

Brendon opens his mouth out to retort, but William interrupts, “But we’ve told each other enough.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

William nods. “When you love someone, none of that matters. Their flaws. Their secrets. Their past. You forgive them for it.”

“Who says I love Ryan?” Brendon asks, taking a seat at the foot of the bed, eyes pleading with the other two to help him make sense of this world. This new, European world he ran away to without a look back.

Bill smiles. “No one had to say anything.”

Brendon almost regrets walking into this hotel room.

 

 

\---

 

  
When Brendon next finds Ryan, he’s closer to the tide (or perhaps the tide is closer to him?) and still picking through arpeggios absentmindedly. One of his hobbit hats are beside him, filled with some single bills and loose change tourists must’ve tossed his way. His pale skin is burned a brighter red than it was when Brendon left him all those hours ago, obscured by the night sky but lighted by the Barcelona street lamps.

“I’m sorry,” Brendon murmurs, voice quiet compared to the roar of the ocean and the twang of guitar strings. The sand is rough against his knees, and Ryan’s silence is agonizing to his ears.

“You didn’t do anything.” Ryan sounds detached and unconcerned. A rough chord from his guitar accentuates that fact.

And Brendon wants to cry. Right then, right there. He really does because he thinks he’s finally broken Ryan. He thinks he finally broke the strange bond between them, the strange bond that had lured Ryan from Rome and had made Brendon question every decision he’s ever made his entire life. The kind of bond that made Brendon think that every mistake he’s ever made in his life is okay; it’s okay because all those mistakes led him to Rome and Ryan and to this feeling and to this moment right here, right now. And now Ryan hates him, and Brendon thinks that just might hurt the more than the past.

“My parents hate me because I’m gay. They disowned me because they think I’m a faggot. They wanted me to admit it was a phase and to settle down and marry a nice girl and be the perfect Mormon son they’ve always wanted,” Brendon begins, heart beating erratically and eyes trained on the grains of sand around the two of them, avoiding Ryan’s eyes, “A-and I was homeless and hungry, and they’re my parents, s-so I went home. Told them it was just a phase. They agreed to send me to my religious sojourn in the Netherlands….”

Ryan opens his mouth to ask a question, but Brendon shakes his head. “In my religion, you go away on a sojourn in some foreign country for two years. I had the Netherlands. A-and I wanted to get away from my parents, so… I ran away in the Netherlands. I turned my back on God, Ryan. I’m going to hell, and I don’t want to go alone.”

He’s crying now. He knows he is; he can feel the salty evidence of weakness sliding down his cheek and marking the sand with his betrayal. Can feel Ryan watching Brendon fall apart at the realization that he hadn’t run away from his problems, that they’re still there- laughing and jeering at him every time he turns his back. Brendon hasn’t run away from his problems at all, he’s only made them worse.

“Brendon, you’re not going to hell,” Ryan whispers, moving his guitar from his lap and scooting closer to the sobbing figure. Finally, he wraps his arms around Brendon. They’re long and bony and uncomfortable, but Brendon falls victim to the touch, anyways. Falling into Ryan. Falling apart against Ryan. “We’re going to Gibraltar. We’re never going back. And nothing will ever hurt you again. I won’t let it.”

“Ryan?” Brendon’s voice is hitched and raspy, and his fingers are clumsy as they twist into Ryan’s collar. The sea is softer now, and the lamps seemed to have dimmed enough so that the only canopy of lights they’re under now are the stars above them.

“Yes, Brendon?”

“Play a song for me.”

They pull away from each other. Ryan’s shirt is wet from Brendon’s tears, but he doesn’t seem to pay attention when he’s cupping Brendon’s cheek in his hand and catching his eyes. And, just like that, the world dissipates from Brendon’s mind. His past doesn’t exist, the sea is silent and the stars cease to shine. The only thing left on the Barcelona beach is Ryan and Ryan’s eyes and Ryan’s fingers against the back of Brendon’s neck and Ryan’s lips against his… and it’s better than anything Brendon could ever have stayed in Amsterdam for.

Ryan tastes like different smoothie flavors and hotel mints and stale toothpaste upon his tongue, and Brendon’s never wanted to remember a kiss any more than he does now as he fists at Ryan’s shirt and opens his mouth and sighs. The hands grabbing at him are coarse and rough and calloused and suddenly neither of them know whose hands are whose or whose tongue is whose.

All Brendon knows is that this is Ryan and this is what Ryan feels like and tastes like. And this is what their futures could be.

And just like that, everything feels like it’s going to be okay.

 

 

\---

 

The next morning, Gabe is leaning against the car, waiting for Brendon and Ryan to finish their bathroom routines before they head out to Gibraltar- the impending end to the road trip approaching rapidly. William is beside him, already finishing up his second coffee and nuzzling absentmindedly into Gabe’s shoulder over-and-over again.

“I’ll miss Barcelona,” he mumbles, somewhere in between morning sleepiness and coffee jitters.

“Me too, querido.” Gabe tightens his grip around the other boy, feeling his heart skip a beat when William tightens his grip in return. Because never in all his life has Gabe ever expected himself to feel this way about anyone else. He hadn’t felt that way with Erin or any of his other girlfriends.

“I think I love you, Gabe,” William finally admits, glancing up at the older man.

“William,” Gabe sighs, trying to ignore the way his heart has dropped into his stomach or the way his blood has surfaced to his cheeks, “don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what? Tell you how I feel about you?” He frowns. “Because, fuck, Gabe, I do. I can’t change that, and I don’t want to change that. I love you. Now you can take it or drop me off in Paris because I don’t have a reason to live without you.”

“William, we have to go home eventually….” Gabe wheedles, even if his arm brings William closer and he drops his chin on top of the boy’s head.

“And we can go there together, Gabe.” William hugs him back for all he’s worth. “You’re my home, now.”

Gabe’s never believed in love before, but when William kisses him, he forgets why.

 

 

\---

 

They’re on the road again. Leaving Barcelona behind and on their way to Gibraltar. Their final days ticking down before the road trip is denounced, before they head their separate ways into a cold world that will just spit them out all over again.

“We can’t stay in Europe forever,” is Gabe’s excuse to this, no matter how true it is.

Ryan hates the idea of leaving this all. He’s been in Rome far too long to ever envision the United States again. What if he isn’t in love with Brendon as much on the other side of the Atlantic? What if love is restricted to a certain time and place?

“Brendon?” Ryan whispers to the boy against his shoulder.

“Yes?” He twines their fingers together, keeping them warm against the air conditioner that Gabe cranks up (and that William doesn’t complain about because he’s got Gabe’s hoodie).

“What if we don’t feel the same way about each other in America?”

“Then let’s enjoy Europe while we still can,” Brendon says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

And Ryan sighs because maybe it is. Maybe he’s only complicating the issue. He feels for Brendon, and Brendon feels for him. That could be enough for the both of them. “Brendon, thank you. For helping me out of Rome.”

“Thank you for helping me sort through the skeletons in my closet.”

Ryan smiles as some Smiths song comes on the radio and stares out into the horizon ahead, Brendon’s hand tight against his and their breaths synched with the static over the radio.

 

 

\---

 

“I’m glad you didn’t die before I met you,” Gabe says once more, driving down the winding Spanish roads en route to Gibraltar.

“I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you, either,” William admits, something they’ll only do in privacy- with Brendon and Ryan asleep against each other in the backseat of the car.

Ever since Barcelona, William has been thinking less and less about his past and more and more about his future with Gabe. The future they could have together if only Gabe could recognize that what they have isn’t going to fizzle up when they stop chasing freedom together. Because, truth be told, William thinks they’ve always had freedom- just no one to share it with.

“Gabe, I love you,” William tries again.

The car slows, and the volume of the radio turns down. Gabe sighs again and casts a quick glance at William. “I love you, too, Bill. And I’m fucking scared over it.”

“Gabe, there’s nothing to be scared of. It’s only love.” Yes, William’s a hopeless romantic, but he’s also a realist.

“Alex left me, Bill,” Gabe chokes out, “He left me, and he’s not coming back.”

The car swerves but only a bit.

“Gabe, pull over,” William instructs.

The radio is muted.

“Gabe, _pull over_ ,” William starts panicking.

The older man feels a tear in his eye.

“ _Gabe, pull over_!” William nearly screams.

 

 

\---

 

  
He slams on the brakes and pulls over, watching as William scrambles out of the car, nearly red with frenzied anxiety and leftover sunburn from the Spanish sun. Gabe watches as the younger trips over himself to some hitchhiker on the side of the road, causing Gabe to illicit an annoyed groan. He’s done picking up hitchhikers. They all leave him in the end. Everyone leaves him. He’s done taking in strays. He doesn’t want his heart to be an orphanage because then he’ll never have a home.

“Gabe, come out here!” William shouts.

Gabe shakes his head and shrinks further into his seat, willing himself away, trying to escape into someone else’s mind. Trying to escape into Alex Gaskarth’s mind as he opens the glove box and pulls out scraps of writing.

_Sell me out, I’m yesterday’s old news…._

“Gabe, come out here! Please!” Bill is pleading

_…phrases left on paper, black ink bleeding through…._

In the backseat, Ryan and Brendon stir from their dreamlands.

_…the pages where we made our history…._

Gabe refuses to let another skeleton in his rearview mirror.

_…call me foolish, I feel hopeless…._

William is still shouting, but his voice is drowned out by the sounds of cars coasting by them. Gibraltar seems like a long way off at this rate, he thinks.

…like a deer caught in headlights, I won’t know what hit me….

“Gabe, it’s me!”

_…running from lions never felt like such a mistake…._

And when Gabe does glance in his rearview, he sees Alex Gaskarth on the side of a Spanish road, smiling as though he never left at all.

 

 

\---

 

No one says anything until they reach the next rest stop. Ryan and Brendon, sensing the tension in the air, make some lame excuses to go to the bathroom and hurry out of the car. Even William hightails it out of there, offering to pay this round of gas, leaving Gabe and Alex in the car. Together. Alone.

“What are you doing in Spain?” Gabe growls.

Alex blinks, startled by his tone before peeling off the seatbelt and clambering up to fill in the passenger seat. “Looking for you.”

“You left.”

“I came back,” Alex murmurs, wrapping a cautious arm around the Uruguayan man, who stiffens but doesn’t shrug away from the touch.

“Why?”

“Because I realized the mistake I made. Because I couldn’t go back to Baltimore without you,” he explains, voice almost begging for an apology. “Gabe, this roadtrip was the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“Then why did you leave?” Gabe demands again, this time punching the steering wheel. The car horn screeches loudly across the parking lot and washes out the noise of Gabe’s crying.

“Gabe.” Alex tightens his grip around Gabe, scooting closer. “If you had been in my place, and William had shown up out of nowhere begging you to leave with him, wouldn’t you?”

….

“Gabe, you would have, wouldn’t you?”

Gabe doesn’t say anything, but Alex knows the answer.

 

 

\---

 

The next morning, they’re in Gibraltar. Alex calls Jack to tell him that he found Gabe and that he loves him. Jack responds with an, I miss you, but his partner understands that Alex needs to finish this up. That you can’t run from lions without getting a few cuts and bruises along the way. A few scars that might last a lifetime.  
“

Gabe missed you,” William whispers to Alex as the Mediterranean breeze whips around them.

“He loves you,” Alex counters back, watching the way William smiles in a way that he’d never have imagined possible that night upon meeting him on the Eiffel Tower. He glances over at Ryan, Brendon and Gabe who are playing with some disposable camera. “So… Ryan and Brendon?”

William smiles and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Feels like we’re family, y’know. After all we’ve been through, I think we deserve this.”

Alex nods. “That’s why I came back.”

Over the chatter of noisy tourists, the two of them hear Ryan say, “Grab my acoustic, Brendon, and I’ll play a song for you.”

The boy runs to the car to retrieve the guitar for the musician. William and Alex look on with curiosity until Gabe wanders over, subtly grabbing Bill’s hand from his pocket and lacing their fingers together. “Done running from lions, then, Alex?”

Alex nods, eyes shining like they haven’t done since the plane left the runway in Rome. “For now. But when you four are tired of it, I’d like to take you to Baltimore and show you where I grew up.”

“Kid,” Gabe laughs, “you still haven’t grown up.”

Alex rolls his eyes. “Neither have you.”

Ryan tunes his guitar and a few feet off they here him softly serenading Brendon, “ _And then she said she can’t believe, genius only comes along in storms of fabled, foreign tongues. Tripping eyes and flooded lungs. Northern downpour sends its love_.”

Vaguely, Alex wonders if Ryan ever thought of a partner because he has some unfinished poetry that might sound good with a guitar. He shakes the thought from his mind as he catches the way Gabe and William’s eyes shine like those Parisian nights that they took for granted. “We should go back to Paris,” he suggests, “I don’t think we ever got to appreciate it properly.”

“We have to go home, Alex,” Gabe reminds him.

“Gabe, we’ll get there,” William says sweetly, squeezing his hand. “We have time.”

“ _Hey moon, please forget to fall down._ ”

“There are plenty of beasts to run from across the Atlantic,” William adds, “Gabe, we’ll make it home. Together.”

And Alex smiles because, yeah, together sounds pretty damned good.

They don’t have all the time in the world anymore, but that’s okay because there’s nothing chasing them.

“ _Hey moon, don’t you go down._ ”

Over the sound of Ryan’s voice and the sound of the sea, Alex can only think of how Europe doesn’t feel as much of a home as being squished in the backseat of a car, coasting through foreign countries and singing New Found Glory songs that started this road trip in the first place.

Europe already kissed them thanks.


End file.
